


So this is permanence

by magpie_03



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Epilepsy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Seizures, Tonic Clonic seizures, absence seizures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:42:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10039052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: Hey everyone,So this has been sitting in my drafts forever. A story about Will having epilepsy and trying to hide his brain from everyone else, including Hannibal Lecter.Updates will be irregular as I'm going through a rough patch with my own epilepsy and health. Just wanted to share with you some of what I've been written. Please note that this isn't intended as a medical study -- this story is solely based on personal experience!Happy reading. :)





	

"I shoot Mrs. Marlow expertly through the neck. This is not a fatal wound. The bullet misses every artery. She is paralyzed before it leaves her body. Which doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain. It just means she can’t do anything about it. This is my design."

 

Words like bullets. Missiles leave your mouth. This isn't the metallic aftertaste of medical language suggesting distance, safety. This is something different. A sense of fear you just can't get used to, like a horror movie you've seen a thousand times and yet here you are. Sweaty hands. Your heartbeat starts hammering in your head with frightful certainty. Your brain making itself known. _All I heard was my heart, dim, but fast, like footsteps fleeing into silence._ The hammering in your head and you can feel it, can feel it coming like a wave. It just means you can't do anything about it.

 

"Will, are you alright?"

 

Beverly Katz’s voice distant and static, like a long-distance phone call with no reception. Not enough electrical signals, or too many.

 

“Will?”

 

You lean against the wall. Raw concrete sprinkled with blood. A litmus test for fear. Thoughts scraped bare.

 

This is not a fatal wound.

 

"Will?"

 

The world drops dead.

 

“Will?”

 

This is my design.

 

...

 

"He’s had a seizure."

 

Hannibal's voice through the aching haze of memory. Reliability. His hands on Will's back. Eyes screening his body, shielding him from onlookers.

 

"I said it was mild."

 

Mild seizures -- does that mean I’m allowed to feel less tired, less confused? Am I granted the certainty of knowing who I am and where I am? Am I allowed to feel less exposed around other people? Less embarrassed?

 

…

 

Interpreting an EEG like reading tea leaves --- _there’s so much we don’t know about the human brain._ Wires coming out of your head and you feel like a human black box. There’s input and there’s output, and no one knows what’s going on inside. Lines spiking up and down. Electrical imbalance. Unstable.

 

…

 

“Keppra. He was epileptic..”

Levetiracetam doesn’t turn you into a serial killer, Will thinks sourly, but epilepsy sows seeds for fear like your body is made of potting soil. _The structure of a fungus mirrors that of the human brain. An intricate web of connections._ Fear is a powerful fertilizer -- it grows holes inside you just to fill them up again, like shadows leaping into the unknown.

 

… __  
  


“You’ve never been an FBI agent?”

Katz’ disbelief almost a relief, like she really thought he was one of them, belonging rightfully to the academy. He’d gone to great lengths to hide his condition as a trainee, taking his medication behind locked doors and having grand mal seizures in bathroom stalls. At some point someone mistook the groaning and gasping for a one-night stand; the snarky remarks and dirty looks he received was worth the lie. Better than being stared at, even if that meant waking up to merciless fluorescent light, head cracked open on the sink. The blood on his clothes a dark reminder of what it was like growing up with a brain like his. How his mother would yell at him for having fits in public, how he’d come out of an absence at school just to have his biology teacher imitate his seizure. Eyes rolling, mouth slack. Laughter ringing in his ears. Will slowly wipes his mouth. The bare bathroom walls reflect his sobs like a mirror cracked all by itself.


End file.
